Farther to Fall
by Apocalypse Cow
Summary: SiriusRemus, ? One-shot. Everyone knows. Dumbledore watches. History has a


Farther to Fall  
  
Sirius/Remus, ?/? One-shot. Everyone knows. Dumbledore watches. History has a habit of repeating itself. (Slight humor, oddness abounds)  
  
It was really one of those everyone-knows, public-secret type of things with them - sort of like how everyone knew that Severus Snape had a thing for that Evans kid back in third year and everyone knew that Dumbledore really was a complete loony. Everyone in the whole school (including most of the staff) knew that Remus Lupin and Sirius Black were together except for the two boys themselves.  
  
Neither of them understood why they attracted strange looks whenever they went anywhere together, or why James and the Evans kid (who seemed to be in league) had the ever-obnoxious habit of whispering to each other in class, looking over at the two of them sitting together, and then giggling. It was unbearably girlish of Prongs, in Sirius's opinion, but there was really nothing he could do about it. After all, the same behavior was at one time or another exhibited by everyone in their year, even Wormtail, who worshipped the ground Sirius and James walked on.  
  
Remus and Sirius never questioned their relationship, although to some it seemed unnaturally close, because they were Best Friends, and the things they did were just the things that Best Friends do. Neither of them really noticed when they sat a little too close, except for when Remus (the cuddly one) would scoot just a-little-too-closer. Sirius (the prickly one) never found it all that strange (when he was sober) that he didn't really mind it.  
  
Remus was always surprised that people would be SHOCKED when Sirius brought some pretty girl to the ball and would come to him offering their condolences (except for that one time when Sirius took his cousin, in which case their shock was perfectly understandable). Of course, Sirius's date would never be quite as offended as she should be when he would ditch her in favor of an attempt to get Remus to cut loose and dance all night long. She would just sigh, smiling, and say it was only to be expected. After all, they were Hogwarts' Number-One Hot Item. No mere girl could expect to change that.  
  
That was when James would swoop in and sweet-talk her, get her a drink, ditching his "just-friends" date in the process. He had no problem with taking his best friend's castoffs - after all, they were always HOT.  
  
Nobody ever thought that any of this was the least bit strange.  
  
None of the teachers ever commented on it (after all, it just wasn't polite), with the glaring exception of their fifth-year DADA teacher, Professor Hatake (but then, he was just plain strange). He always made a point of pairing those two together for group projects and accompanying these announcements with large, fake, theatrical winks. Sirius and Peter maintained that Hatake did this purely to annoy them, and they were mostly right - Professor Hatake did it purely to amuse himself. He was a little bit twisted, that way.  
  
The other professors frowned publicly on his behavior, and as such it was not an uncommon sight to find one or more of the teachers (usually McGonagall) ambushing him in the hallway. Their "conversations" were always rather one-sided, seeing as while they lectured him, Professor Hatake (or Scarecrow, as most called him) twiddled his thumbs and looked at the ceiling, read one of his strange, most likely perverted books, or interrupted them to prattle on about the secret lives of grapes. Yes, the Scarecrow was Strange with a capital S.  
  
And all the while, the loony Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, would watch from the shadows, grinning a bit menacingly and sucking on some lemon drops. He knew pretty much everything that went on at school, was privy to all of the nastiest rumors and started a good few of them himself. After all, he was completely insane. Professor Scarecrow was a man after his own heart, but he was probably the only one sad to see him go.  
  
Who really wants a teacher who causes more trouble than his students?  
  
Dumbledore was there, patrolling the hallways invisibly, when both boys made their confessions of love to the absolute wrong people and came out the worse for wear, and he was there when each pulled their masks back into place and carried on. He heard every word they exchanged on matters of love (and there weren't many) with anybody (but especially each other), because secretly, Dumbledore loved soap operas and wasn't quite sure how to get them.  
  
He was watching (and laughing) when a first-year was dumb enough to tell them what Everyone Knew, and laughing as they freaked out and tried to rationalize all of it. They laughed too much and pretended it was funnier than it was and avoided each other for the rest of the day (or tried to, but ended up running into each other every other second and blushing a lot), and to Dumbledore it really WAS hilarious. McGonagall found him at one point laughing hysterically in the stairwell and, figuring that he finally HAD cracked, dragged him up to Madame Pomfrey's for a checkup while he muttered "The cantaloupe! The watermelon! It's the cauliflower!" to himself between fits of insane laughter.  
  
"Albus," she informed him quite seriously, "You will be the death of me yet!"  
  
He didn't miss out on the pun and laughed all the while.  
  
Dumbledore wasn't actually there when the two made their first awkward, accidental confessions to each other, although the house-elves gave him an account that was nothing short of excellent. They even acted it out for him, which was somewhat scarring for the young DADA professor, Armand-or- something (whose face and name no one ever remembered), who wandered into the infirmary during the kissing bit before stumbling back out, clutching his face and screaming, "MY EYES!!!"  
  
The part that Dumbledore would remember the most fondly, however, was the bit he'd actually seen, right after the Stupid First-Year's Life-Altering Encounter. Remus and Sirius had just looked at each other in a way that made Dumbledore's inner soap-opera-junkie-housewife melt. Remus looked away, blushing and laughing awkwardly.  
  
"They make it sound so . . . insane," he said, quietly, and Sirius inspected a passing cloud intensely for a few moments before answering,  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I mean," Remus laughed again, more nervous this time, "It's not like I can't live without you . . ."  
  
"Definitely."  
  
With that, they headed their own separate ways, and to Dumbledore the scene looked terribly familiar. It wasn't until years and years later that he would remember why.  
  
From the very beginning of Harry Potter's Sorting, Dumbledore recognized that that year's batch had SPECTACULAR soap-opera potential. It wasn't just Harry himself (The Chosen One) or the presence of Draco Malfoy (his Ultimate Rival, Sort Of), but there were two there who struck a chord with him, who (by blending in) stood out among the rest.  
  
He watched them carefully, occasionally nudging Minerva and pointing to them, grinning, just to be annoying. He tried it on Severus once (and only once) but ceased once he realized that there was a very distinct possibility that Snape would hex him into a week from tomorrow if he didn't stop it. In the meantime, however, his inner house-wife was jumping with glee.  
  
It didn't take very long for the Public-Secret state of affairs to once again reign, and he was very pleased with it. The Marauder Era had been one of his favorites since Tom, but this one was good enough to spark his interest. Sure, their friend-group-configuration-thingamabobjiggy was significantly altered, but the basic principle was there, and it was as good as ever.  
  
When Lupin came back to Hogwarts to teach, Dumbledore had a field day with it. "Look!" he'd say, elbowing him annoyingly. "Isn't it adorable? Looks a little bit familiar, eh? Eh? Don't you love how history repeats itself?"  
  
Remus would give him a look that was nothing short of withering, saying, "For their sakes, I really hope it doesn't."  
  
Dumbledore would just smile semi-knowingly and stuff his mouth with cheese. He was very good at double-tasking.  
  
He was there after The Incident, when Remus and Sirius, lost as little children, tried to figure out what they were going to do with the meager rest of their lives. Awkward didn't even begin to describe it. They fidgeted and hemmed and hawwed and generally avoided doing anything constructive to the point where he was forced to spell it all out for them. It was entirely his fault that they ended up living together. They deserved another chance at life.  
  
Sirius and Remus weren't teenagers anymore. They wouldn't just spring back into each others' arms - years of lies and false hopes and dead dreams lay between them, a vast ocean of differences they'd accumulated over the years, one they'd never really get a chance to cross.  
  
In the long run, two years isn't all that long.  
  
Dumbledore never watched soap operas for the original and amazing plot twists (because there were none), and so he didn't need to be a psychic to feel the end coming. He tried to distract himself by looking away from them, losing himself in Hogwarts life. His two Gryffindor divas were just as amusing as ever, and four times as clueless as Remus and Sirius had been.  
  
Then even this little distraction was ripped away from him, and the toad-woman ended up taking his job over. It had been so very long since he'd actually been in on the action, but he wasn't surprised. It was absolutely inevitable, after all.  
  
That year he sunk to a new low, paying Colin Creevey to document the relationship between the two boys. Every once in a while (seeing that Remus and Sirius hadn't even TRIED to get back together yet) he would whip out the photos when his favorite werewolf was in the room and shoot annoyingly knowing looks accompanied by random nods at him. Remus would just groan loudly and make a strategic retreat. After all, it's incredibly rude to hit senile old men, and politeness was something he'd striven for all of his life.  
  
The boys weren't completely stupid, however, and Dumbledore had a feeling that they knew he was watching them, and that at least one of them suspected why. Every time he got a Hogwarts package in the mail, he half- expected it to be Colin Creevey's head on a platter with the words "Stop Stalking Us" scribbled on his forehead.  
  
Sometimes Dumbledore (who still has no life and few real friends) will stop a few of the house-elves on their way out from cleaning his room and ask if they want to hear a story, and of course they always do. He is The Master, after all, and they can practically feel the life seeping from him, so they do all that they can to humor him in his old age. The story he tells is always the same, and has most of the usual, recurring themes from fairy stories - forbidden love, strange curses, deep magic, and so on - and usually the names are pretty much the only things that change. They change depending on the week, the month, the time of day. Sometimes it's whatever he had for breakfast (because he brings up Sirius and Remus whenever he's feeling particularly flatulent).  
  
All of the house-elves have heard his stories at least three or four times, and they're actually not that bad, so they never really mind. There are only a few names they ever remember - Bee and Pierre, Dark and Irish (although he's not), Padfoot and Moony, all of which are obviously nicknames. Halfway through his stories he stops with the detail and asks "And how do you suppose it all ends?", just to make sure they've all been listening.  
  
Usually he gives them a straight answer when they give him the obligatory "no", but near Christmas and just holidays in general he tends towards the cryptic and strange. "He fell through the veil," he'll say, "and was never seen again," or "They never crossed the ocean, you know. I don't think they even got halfway through building the boats."  
  
After being subjected to such answers for aeons, the house-elves are actually quite grateful when he is forced to answer the question to his latest obsession with a quiet, thoughtful, "I don't know."  
  
One day, inevitably, he finds the answer to his question while snooping through the (supposedly) empty hallways early in the morning. Somehow he accidentally-on-purpose ends up just outside the Gryffindor common room, listening at the spot where the Fat Lady's painting doesn't quite meet the wall. They're halfway through The Conversation when he finally tunes in, much to his disappointment.  
  
"I don't think we can ignore it any longer," one of them says, hugging his knees. Dumbledore can't see all that well through walls, so he can't really tell which is which.  
  
There are some soft words which he doesn't quite catch before the cliche hits. "I've never felt this way before."  
  
"Neither have I."  
  
"They must really think we're stupid, you know? Acting like if they whisper, we won't notice."  
  
Their figures come into clearer focus now; clear enough for Dumbledore to see that one's clutching his coffee so tightly that his knuckles have gone white. They contrast very strangely with his dark, dark hands.  
  
"It's really strange, this feeling," he says, staring into his cup, brooding. "It's like . . . like . . ."  
  
"Like breaking and mending all at once," Dumbledore knows that one by heart.  
  
"It's like . . ." he's having a hard time getting it out, until something, some unseen cue hardens his resolve and he looks straight up into his best friend's eyes.  
  
"It's like I can't live without you," Dean says, and Seamus nods, just before they kiss.  
  
They've known it all along.  
  
One day (the day before Christmas), long after the wizarding world's affairs have been quite nicely settled, Dumbledore will be sitting by his tiny window, sipping cocoa and sorting through his rather odd collection of socks. He will, inevitably, be in the middle of a house-elf story-ambush, and they will be sitting there below him, raptly listening.  
  
He won't ask the question halfway through this time, just stop and stare out the window at the softly falling purple snow, and he'll think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to allow the Weasley twins to visit Hogwarts.  
  
Winky will ask the question for him, twisting a piece of her filthy hair, and he won't answer for a good, long while. When he finally does, he will be cryptic, as always.  
  
"You know, I'm on a Chocolate Frog card," he'll say, silently sipping his cocoa. "It's one of my proudest achievements."  
  
She'll interrupt him, asking him what that has to do with anything, and the others will do all in their power to shut her up.  
  
"History has a habit of repeating itself, and all of the endings to all of the stories are really recorded there. On the card, you know." He'll pull one out of nowhere and toss it to her, sounding as bitter as it is possible for him to be (which is not very). "Of course, the last story I'm not sure of just yet. The ending hasn't yet happened, but I can feel it coming. I'm old - I know these things. They're just a little different, though, and that might be enough to save them - I certainly hope it is. There is nothing more painful than endings like these, and I should know. I wish them the very best."  
  
"But the ending is coming, and history's not going to let them go."  
  
Winky will never find the place on the chocolate frog card where it says Remus Lupin in mourning, Sirius Black deceased, but for the rest of her life she'll try. She'll skim over the part about Philosophers' Stones and old, dead Dark Wizards, of course, because she's old enough to shudder at the mention of Grindelwald's name.  
  
Sometimes she'll wonder what Dumbledore meant by all his less-than-subtle hinting and bitter "I-should-know"s, but she won't think about it too much. After all, the old man's crazy.  
  
That's something everyone knows.  
  
Hey! First one to figure out the names of the three couples Dumbledore talks about gets a cookie! Or something . . .  
  
Hint: Knowing what Dumbledore's name means helps. And yes, I know darn well that he's supposed to be Headmaster by the time Remus was in school, but I liked it better this way.  
  
Please review! Feedback makes the world go 'round. 


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